• SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Bernie
    Bernie:
    General Failure:
    what made him "officially l33t" was his thirty-year friendship with the parent company's CEO.
    Just stop right there. Guaranteed WTF. Don't even have to read the rest of the post.
    I could have stopped right after the first paragraph which ended with
    And best of all, the vending machine gave out drinks for $0.25.
    The cost of soda is something to get excited about if you're flipping burgers, not the new IT Manager/Network Admin/Webmaster.

    I don't know... getting soda for cheaper is what I'd consider a perk. I get soda for free at my current job and it's pretty great. I've just been working out more to offset it :-P

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    My Name:
    MrsPost:
    This sounds like the perfect time to call the BSA because I bet you dollars to donuts (mmm..... donuts) that Dave was using the same copies of Norton on multiple machines.

    I haven't read the licence, but I assume it's not wrong to install it on more than one computer if he uninstalls it first, so that only one copy is installed at any time

    Besides, the story claims that Dave bought every copy Best Buy had.

    Maybe they only had one copy.

  • (cs) in reply to Niki
    Niki:
    You can uninstall norton?

    Oh, man this deserves a blue!

  • grammernazee (unregistered) in reply to SpiderX
    SpiderX:
    ... Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.
    Virii?? What's that? Do your Latin declensions go to 11?
  • Moekandu (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    CaRL:
    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.

    This was immediately what to John?

    This was immediately clear to John. Because it's clear, AKA transparent, you can't see the word. But it's there.

    Makes sense.

    No, no. The correct response is, "I see."

  • Patrick (unregistered)

    And this is why we're in a recession...

  • Patrick (unregistered)

    Herpes? Herpes! You have herpes...and gonorrhea? I don't need a condom.

  • (cs) in reply to Moekandu
    Moekandu:
    Anon:
    CaRL:
    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.
    This was immediately what to John?
    This was immediately clear to John. Because it's clear, AKA transparent, you can't see the word. But it's there.
    Makes sense.
    No, no. The correct response is, "I see."
    But what if he, ehm, *** whoosh *** oh never mind.
  • n (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    moltonel:
    Installing and then *uninstalling* the antivirus ? Those things are good enough for curing, but not for preventing ? Or it's known for a fact that nobody will ever receive a virus by mail again ?

    Amazing :)

    [snip]

    Wasn't sure what "VPN" had to do with anything though, unless he was talking about links to servers that were located at corporate...I'd assume that they wouldn't be so wildly stupid to connect across the internet on a clear connection, depending only on an IP whitelist to save them.

    That seems to be what the point of the VPN discussion was about. The companies are linked over the net protected only by whitelists to limit access. As for how this is relevant to the second part of the story is hard to say, but it is probably a demonstration of what Dave is like and what Dave thinks of best practice.

  • (cs) in reply to grammernazee
    grammernazee:
    SpiderX:
    ... Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.
    Virii?? What's that? Do your Latin declensions go to 11?
    I'm sure that if you look it up, you'll find it's the proper equivalent of vir-usus, which, as we all know, means a hero is an experience.
  • jordanwb (unregistered) in reply to Otac0n
    Otac0n:
    Niki:
    You can uninstall norton?

    Oh, man this deserves a blue!

    +1

  • (cs)

    The true wtf is not that he doesn't believe in antivirus, but that he was too incompentent to set up the systems in a way that virus aren't an issue.

  • KnobHead (unregistered) in reply to Moekandu
    Moekandu:
    Anon:
    CaRL:
    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.

    This was immediately what to John?

    This was immediately clear to John. Because it's clear, AKA transparent, you can't see the word. But it's there.

    Makes sense.

    No, no. The correct response is, "I see."

    I see ly now, thanks for ing that up....

  • (cs) in reply to idfk
    idfk:
    "the better part of a half-decade"

    So, like, 3 years?

    Your measuring stick is faulty. I make it "three minutes."

    I think they were contiguous. Unfortunately, all three were preceded with a very nasty drug incident, involving Tony Blair, a bad haircut, and some sort of natural disaster involving carbohydrates; so I can't be sure.

    I'm sure I enjoyed that better part, but on the whole I'm glad I've blocked the memory out.

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    And the real WTF is of course Norton. *spit*
    I dunno. My ex made $5 million out of them; and I don't recall giving her any viruses.

    Mind you, I didn't give her anything useful, either. I guess it works both ways.

  • m0ffx (unregistered)
    SomeCoder:
    I don't know... getting soda for cheaper is what I'd consider a perk. I get soda for free at my current job and it's pretty great. I've just been working out more to offset it :-P
    Yeah, I like cheap vending machines. 80p in my college, 60p in my dept, guess which I prefer?
    Otac0n:
    Oh, man this deserves a blue!

    No, to deserve a blue one needs to be good at sport.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Besides, the story claims that Dave bought every copy Best Buy had.

    If that particular Best Buy was anything like the shop I work for, every copy of Norton would still only be one copy.

    BTW, the story sounds like the school I work for. The main regional support guy treats everyone else like they don't have a clue, yet does stupid things like pinging our router to test our internet speeds (despite the fact I did say it was only sites passing the state managed filter that were slow).

  • Real-modo (unregistered) in reply to Moekandu
    Moekandu:
    Anon:
    CaRL:
    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.

    This was immediately what to John?

    This was immediately clear to John. Because it's clear, AKA transparent, you can't see the word. But it's there.

    Makes sense.

    No, no. The correct response is, "I see."

    Thanks for ing that up for us.

  • Real-modo (unregistered) in reply to Real-modo
    Real-modo:
    Thanks for ing that up for us.
    Late and lame again...
  • Vlad Patryshev (unregistered)

    The sad truth is that this happens everywhere, all the time, with all kinds of people.

    I had an intern at Google, a student from Singapore. He managed to make the Java Bigtable reader run 20 times faster (don't ask me how, it's a secret). The next step was to sell this solution to the people who wrote the original code, the great gurus. It never flew, of course. So one obscure application uses it, and he himself uses it when needed. That's it.

    Generally speaking, paradigms change with generations.

  • (cs)

    Not even Paula Bean is beneath Dave.

  • Old Fart (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.

    This was immediately what to John?

    This was immediately Anon is a douchey douche douche sound of a wet rag hitting concrete douche to John.

  • (cs)

    Norton? He'd have been better off keeping the virus. Even if he did try to uninstall it afterward.

    Anyway, I call BS. No vending machine charges a mere 25 cents, at least not in the era of flatscreen monitors. Maybe before computers were invented.

    Anon:
    This was immediately to John when he pitched Dave on setting up a VPN during a conference call.

    This was immediately what to John?

    It looks the author accidentally a few words out.

  • (cs) in reply to aflag
    aflag:
    The true wtf is not that he doesn't believe in antivirus, but that he was too incompentent to set up the systems in a way that virus aren't an issue.

    You mean unplugging them?

  • (cs) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Niki:
    You can uninstall norton?

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

    That's how you uninstall Norton

    Hey, this isn't Unix!

    In Windows, its:

    rd /s c:*

  • Kraeloc (unregistered) in reply to DaveK

    I recommend the excellent Norton Removal Tool, published by none other than Symantec themselves; almost an acknowledgment of guilt. It fully removes ALL traces of any Norton-branded product from your system. It's the real uninstaller; that one included with the program is just for show.

  • Kero Hazel (unregistered)

    What impressed me the most about this story was the diplomatic way John managed to handle things. Maybe he got some tips from the manager who muted the initial call with Dave? ;)

    The positive appraisal of the company at the beginning was already setting things up for disaster, and I'm glad that the story didn't end with the poor guy losing his job or quitting in frustration. I wonder how well I would have handled it. I know plenty of people who would stubbornly keep butting heads with Dave, or exploit Dave's virus disaster for personal gain.

    Next time I face a "Dave" at a job I genuinely enjoy, I'll remember this story, keep my cool, and not let him spoil it for me.

  • (cs) in reply to el_oscuro
    el_oscuro:
    jordanwb:
    Niki:
    You can uninstall norton?

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

    That's how you uninstall Norton

    Hey, this isn't Unix!

    In Windows, its:

    rd /s c:*

    Yes you can! Look, I'll show you: [image]

    See, it's running now, and in just a minute I'm going to

    *** Quits: ErrorFroz ([email protected]) (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))

  • (cs) in reply to Kraeloc
    Kraeloc:
    I recommend the excellent Norton Removal Tool, published by none other than Symantec themselves; almost an acknowledgment of guilt. It fully removes ALL traces of any Norton-branded product from your system. It's the real uninstaller; that one included with the program is just for show.
    I fully recommend The excellent Norton Removal Tool.
  • David (unregistered)

    Sounds alot like a guy I work with here. While all the developers sit on the same level both organisationally and literlly, he happens to be the regional managers brother and so elivates himself above all others.

    The best line he ever gave for his mightier then thou was

    "My MCP certificate (which expired 3 yrs ago) is far greater then your Bachelor of Computer Science"

    I simply replied with

    "great so while I was learning about OO programming you learnt how to format a word document"

  • Anti-virus is a scam (unregistered)

    I also "don't believe in antivirus". Mail servers can have them, that's fine, but there's really no point in every desktop having it. Viruses should be contained by preventing PCs from talking directly to eachother (ie: network policy), not by having every command ever ask a bloated program "hey, can I just run something by you?" for every action it attempts.

    Some channels are harder to close: e-mail virus spams everyone in addressbook, etc. It's already gotten through the mail server's scanner, now what? In the end it all comes down to education.

  • (cs) in reply to FlyY
    FlyY:
    SpiderX:
    I always love it when people tell me that they don't use an antivirus, and they have never gotten a virus. I like to follow up with "how do you know you never had a virus, if you don't use an antivirus". Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.

    Shame you don't know how many it has missed!

    I always follow-up smartasses like SpiderX with: "What good is a virus if I don't notice ANY problems at all. No documents corrupted, no programs that stop working, no crashes, no annoying adds popping up, no outgoing connections that I didn't authorize,... What kind of virus do you think I could have without knowing about it?

    But last year, I got a heavy discount on Microsoft Live OneCare so I tried it out and these are the results of the jury:

    • Number of files scanned: every single one of them
    • Number of virusses found: 0, null, nothing, nada,...
    • Number of times getting shot in Quake when virus scanner decides to perform a FULL system scan: priceless :-(

    My company's laptop has Symantec and Windows Defender, my workstation at the client's office runs McAfee, my wife's desktop runs one of them free thingies... I've never ever seen a virus scanner detect a virus on a computer I was responsible for. It just eats CPU and costs money and that's it.

    Of course... I know what I'm doing.

  • Kempeth (unregistered) in reply to moltonel
    moltonel:
    Installing and then *uninstalling* the antivirus ? Those things are good enough for curing, but not for preventing ? Or it's known for a fact that nobody will ever receive a virus by mail again ?

    He probably did not have enough licenses to install it on all the pc's simultaneously...

    I friend of mine once supported a company with a similarly "secured" network. Despite his warnings nothing was changed and one fateful friday afternoon a customer plugged his stoneage notebook into the network. That notebook was possessed by more or less every bug of the last 10 years and some of them went straight for the exchange server. Now the beauty of it all is that the problem was only detected after the friday full backup, meaning that when my friend was called in to pull them out of the shit he had the pleasure of restoring the whole network from a week's worth of incremental backups... Despite a hefty bill (and I'm sure a good portion of cursing) they learned nothing from the incident-

  • (cs)

    Ah virus scanners are such fun! My office used to use Trend Mirco for virus protection, until one unfortunate day when the antivirus server got infected with a virus, so the virus scanner actually started distributing the virus to every machine on the network (it didn't have definitions for the virus of course so couldn't clean it).

    After a month or more we moved to McAfee with the settings set to "OMFG Super Extreme Security: Turbo Edition". For about 6 months everyone noticed that the machines were running slower and slower. It would take at least half an hour for a dual core 3gb Ram system to boot and stabalize itself enough to load any programs. When a new technician came in, he noticed that all the machines were "passively scanning" each system's drives, including the 4 or 5 mapped network drives. Meaning there were about 200 machines, scanning the same shared files on the companies servers 24 hours a day... Now THAT's protection!!

  • (cs) in reply to Claxon
    Claxon:
    <snip> When a new technician came in, he noticed that all the machines were "passively scanning" each system's drives, including the 4 or 5 mapped network drives. Meaning there were about 200 machines, scanning the same shared files on the companies servers 24 hours a day... Now THAT's protection!!
    I once had an issue when my McAfee detected a virus on a share of the companies file server and sent a virus report to our security guys. Their response was to immediately lock MY pc out of the network! Obviously...
  • Daaave (unregistered) in reply to DaveK

    You're my wife now, Dave!

  • NameNotFoundException (unregistered) in reply to bigtuna
    bigtuna:
    I love when people say 'oh he/she has been doing it for X years, they know what they're doing.'

    Terrible assumption to make. People can skate by for many years being incompetent.

    Why? I have been driving for years without an airbag and without my seatbelts on, and I've never had an accident.

  • your_average_condescending_linux_geek (unregistered) in reply to SpiderX
    SpiderX:
    I always love it when people tell me that they don't use an antivirus, and they have never gotten a virus. I like to follow up with "how do you know you never had a virus, if you don't use an antivirus". Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.

    I'm using linux on a box that's not connected to the internet. So no, I don't use an antivirus, and my box's never gotten a virus

  • Jay (unregistered)

    I'm amazed that nobody pointed out yet, that he's talking about an VPN

    Including his idea for an VPN to secure transactions between his and the parent company

    Disclaimer: This post has been made while being completely aware of Muphry's Law and therefore admits there is bound to be some error in this post!

  • Adrian Coles - UK (unregistered)

    If only this were a unique case. (Although it is extreme).

    I have worked at so many places where the people who have been there longer obviously know better than you. They are the WTF's, not the situation that ensues...

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    Irony is that there is in fact an error in the disclaimer part cries

  • SCB (unregistered) in reply to your_average_condescending_linux_geek
    your_average_condescending_linux_geek:
    SpiderX:
    I always love it when people tell me that they don't use an antivirus, and they have never gotten a virus. I like to follow up with "how do you know you never had a virus, if you don't use an antivirus". Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.

    I'm using linux on a box that's not connected to the internet. So no, I don't use an antivirus, and my box's never gotten a virus

    But if you're not connected to the internet, how did you post that comment?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to SpiderX
    SpiderX:
    I always love it when people tell me that they don't use an antivirus, and they have never gotten a virus. I like to follow up with "how do you know you never had a virus, if you don't use an antivirus". Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.
    There are no stupid questions, just stupid statements. As you've so eloquently proven.
  • (cs)

    Clearly TRWTF is "John Smith". C'mon, Alex, can't your name anonymizer come up with something more original?

  • (cs) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling:
    "What good is a virus if I don't notice ANY problems at all. No documents corrupted, no programs that stop working, no crashes, no annoying adds popping up, no outgoing connections that I didn't authorize,... What kind of virus do you think I could have without knowing about it? <snip> Of course... I know what I'm doing.

    One that's a time bomb ready to delete all your files on (insert date here). Rare but have been done.

    And the last bit is key. You know what you're doing. But if you were admin for an organisation with dozens of computers, and dozens of users, would you trust THEM to all know what they're doing? I'd have the machines running antivirus and antispyware (assuming I wasn't allowed to make them all Linux boxes). Even if the mail server and the web proxy are running scanners, the desktops should have them too - multiple layers of protection.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    You could protect against the Japanese spammers (three posts above) by disallowing any message that exceeds a certain number of hyperlinks. These people are just trying to boost their Google page rank so the messages are stuffed full of hyperlinks. Any genuine comments are only going to contain a couple of hyperlinks max. So just disallow any message that exceeds maybe 10 hyperlinks.

  • (cs)

    O_o

  • prof. memals (unregistered) in reply to SpiderX
    SpiderX:
    I always love it when people tell me that they don't use an antivirus, and they have never gotten a virus. I like to follow up with "how do you know you never had a virus, if you don't use an antivirus". Most virii don't tell you when you're infected. Anyway, I always use Eset's NOD, and it's caught all kinds of virii.
    Except that the antivirus creates an equal double negative, if the machine running the AV has a new/odd virus that is not detected you assume you are protected.
  • (cs) in reply to moltonel
    moltonel:
    Installing and then *uninstalling* the antivirus ? Those things are good enough for curing, but not for preventing ? Or it's known for a fact that nobody will ever receive a virus by mail again ?

    Amazing :)

    No. Once you've been infected with the virus and cleaned it with Norton, you can safely uninstall it and never worry about getting a virus again. Norton creates antibodies on your network as it sanitizes it, and it becomes immune to future viruses.

    It's kind of like when children get the mumps; they never have to worry about getting them again.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Irony is that there is in fact an error in the disclaimer part *cries*

    Wouldn't it only be ironic if your post had been completely error free?

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